A White House official emailed some reporters to say that President Obama's team met today to discuss the ongoing situation on Ukraine. It appears President Obama did not attend. "The President's national security team met today to receive an update on the situation in Ukraine and discuss potential policy options. We will provide further updates later this afternoon," reads the full statement.

SNIPPET: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg is among four people who have been arrested on suspicion of Syria-related terrorism offences, police have said. Mr Begg, 45, who was held by the US authorities for almost three years, was arrested earlier with two other men and a woman in the West Midlands. He was detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas." SNIPPET: "Mr Begg was arrested in Hall Green in Birmingham. The other people arrested - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, a 44-year-old woman and her son, 20, both from Sparkhill - are being...

From now on, it’s the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah House. The political world stopped for a moment when Speaker John Boehner broke into the jaunty old Disney tune — “My, oh my, what a wonderful day” — after a news conference in which he threw in the towel on the debt ceiling fight. He found himself trapped between the immovable object of Democrats determined that they’d never again let Republicans take the nation’s credit hostage and the irresistible force of a dysfunctional, crisis-addicted GOP majority of which he is the putative leader. Boehner decided to skip away in song. Feb. 11, 2014, was...

Testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Admiral Mike Mullen said that the direction given to Special Operations Command Africa commander Lt. Col Gibson was to "hold in place" on the night of the attacks. SNIP Mullen also said that U.S. aircraft were not at the ready while the attack was ongoing. He claimed there was a "physics problem" in addition to a "time and distance problem" that prevented the United States from providing immediate air cover.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to President Obama in the last four plus years. He has drawn a line in the sand and told the Republicans he will not negotiate over increasing the debt ceiling when it comes up later this year. If I recall correctly, he took his ball and went home the last time a deal was reached on the debt ceiling. He said then he would refuse to negotiate an increase in the debt ceiling in the future. I suppose he thinks he can get everything he wants, something he...

President Obama demanded Saturday that Syria take “concrete actions” proving it will surrender its chemical weapons as American and Russian negotiators moved closer to an agreement. “If the current discussions produce a serious plan, I’m prepared to move forward with it,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “But we are not just going to take Russia and Assad’s word for it. We need to see concrete actions to demonstrate that Assad is serious about giving up his chemical weapons.” Just to be sure, he said he would keep American destroyers and other forces in the region...

Last week Stratfor noted that Obama's Bluff would be interpreted as showing "our weakness" by the Russians and Iran...This week we see that Obama's Folly has been driven by the likes of Samantha Powell UN Ambassador who was too busy attending her husbands talk at an IRISH COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL to return to the UN debate on SYRIA...This is the way Obama plays politics....Having dumb women in National Security for political purposes is finally having the effect it deserved.. Before the House Votes on Syria it should demand all the data and info it asked for benghazi, the IRS, and...

Casey James Fury simply didn't want to be at work, and in the process cost the Navy nearly a half-billion dollars and one attack submarine. Fury admitted to setting fire to the USS Miami, a nuclear sub, in May 2012 while it was in dry dock. Fury also admitted to starting a second fire at the dry dock three weeks later, according to federal court documents. In both cases, he told investigators that he started the fires because he was having extreme anxiety and was trying to get out of work, according to federal documents. On Tuesday, the Navy announced...

There have been a lot of news stories recently about young children being punished for talking about guns, making toy guns, owning toy guns, and drawing guns. This new story takes the cake: a group of students from Chase Lake Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington, asked their teacher if they could bring Nerf guns to school. The teacher gave permission, but the school punished the children with suspension anyway. The students even had a perfectly legitimate reason to bring the guns to school; they wanted to fire foam darts 100 times as part of a probability experiment. The school...

Will this finally be enough to break the Obama administration's hold over Senate Democrats when it comes to the Hagel nomination? Chuck Hagel has refused to disclose to the Senate Armed Services Committee the sources of his foreign funding over the last five years. Is Chuck roast? (Hat Tip: Noah P). Republican members of the committee asked Hagel last week for information on whether any of the organizations received funding from any foreign government, individual, or corporation — a request he declined late Tuesday in a letter citing confidentiality agreements. "[T]he information you seek is legally controlled by the individual...

Libyan rebel forces may have been infiltrated by al-Qaeda fighters, a senior American military commander has warned. Admiral James Stavridis, Nato's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, said that American intelligence had picked up "flickers" of terrorist activity among the rebel groups. Senior British government figures described the comment as "very alarming". The admission came as the American, Qatari and British Governments indicated that they were considering arming rebel groups, who yesterday suffered a series of setbacks in their advance along the Libyan coast towards Tripoli. The plan is likely to spark further splits in the international coalition, with Nato and Italian...

A foreign spy agency has pulled off the most serious breach of computer networks in Pentagon history by inserting a flash drive into a U.S. military laptop, Washington has admitted. The previously classified incident, which took place in 2008 in the Middle-East, was disclosed in a magazine article by Deputy Defence Secretary William J Lynn. He said a 'malicious code' on the flash drive spread undetected on both classified and unclassified Pentagon systems, 'establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control'. Writing in an article for Foreign Affairs, Mr Lynn...

Dollar Plunges As Everyone Now Figures Return Of Quantitative Easing Is A Done Deal Joe Weisenthal Aug. 24, 2010, 10:45 AM Today the weak economic data is not prompting a flight-to-the-dollar. Today the weak economic data is causing dollar selling, because it's becoming crystal clear to folks, as ForexLive notes, that quantitative easing II is now a done deal. No more baby steps or holding the balance sheet steady. There's no excuse for the Fed Board of Governors to be have an unclear picture of the economy's direction anymore. And we may not have to wait for very long. Bernanke...

... Offensive jihad in the name of Islam against the U.S. military – perpetrated by a Muslim member of the military – who preached jihad – is now being referred to by the Department of Defense as “workplace violence.”.... Defense.gov News Article: Pentagon Releases Final Fort Hood Shooting Review. WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2010 – Pentagon officials today released the Defense Department’s final review of recommendations issued by an independent panel in the wake of the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting spree on Fort Hood, Texas. Among the department’s top priorities, as outlined in the review, are boosting on-base emergency response capabilities,...

Putin says spies expelled from US had 'tough lives' Russian PM Vladimir Putin during a visit to Ukraine. Photo: 24 July 2010 Mr Putin said that the spies "had a tough life" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he has met the Russian agents recently deported from the US - and claimed they were living "tough lives" and had been "betrayed". He told journalists that he had sung Soviet-era patriotic songs with the agents. However, Mr Putin did not say where the meeting took place. The 10 Russians admitted in a US court earlier this month to being agents for...

Dear President Obama, Every citizen with a modicum of insight into public affairs would say that America is now at a crossroads of decision about what kind of future we want for our nation - and, by extension, for the rest of the world. Whether we like it or not, you are the one who is designated by a vote of the electorate to lead us in that decision-making process. You have asked for the job, and you have proposed yourself as being competent for it. History will judge your Administration on its own merits when your term is complete,...

War On Terror: Attempts to punish the Haditha Marines and Navy SEALs for their courage and bravery under fire failed. Now some would reward timidity and cowardice with a medal for "courageous restraint" under fire. A nonsensical proposal circulating in the Kabul headquarters of the International Security Forces in Afghanistan would give a medal to soldiers in battle who show restraint in the use of deadly force in situations where civilian casualties might result. This will not protect civilians as much as it will endanger the lives of our troops. Our soldiers are already disciplined and trained not to wantonly...

A trial attorney with the Department of Justice’s Voting Rights Section has resigned, citing concerns about the government’s refusal to prosecute a case involving voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party. A letter of resignation obtained by The Washington Examiner from a former Justice Department employee makes clear DOJ has refused to allow attorneys in the Voting Rights Section to testify before the congressionally-chartered bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, despite subpoenas that could result in their being held in contempt. In his letter of resignation, J. Christian Adams said: **** I have incurred significant personal expense in retaining...

According to a search done by former British police detective Neil Sankey, now a U.S. citizen and a licensed private investigator in Los Angeles, Barack Obama reportedly has 27 different social security numbers under 21 different personal and/or familial name variations in 22 different states plus the District of Columbia. Along with PI Susan Daniels, Sankey generated a large social security public data base in his lengthy research project, titled “List of Properties associated with Barack Obama and his family.” Sankey’s research is featured in a web video entitled Dossier2MP4 produced by Jim Przybowski. The Sankey/ Daniels social security investigation...

Senior administration officials say that Faisal Shahzad was put on the no fly list on Monday at 12:30 pm ET. So how was he able to board the Emirates Airlines flight to Dubai? “It takes a few hours for the airlines system to catch up,” a senior administration official tells ABC news. Another senior administration official adds that Emirates refreshes their system to update with US intelligence information periodically – but not frequently. In any case, the first official says that airlines were “within minutes” of Shahzad being put on the no-fly list told to “look at a web-board” and...

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials on Tuesday agreed to release some documents subpoenaed by the Senate Homeland Security Committee but still refuse to send witnesses to testify about the soldier accused in last fall’s deadly shooting at Fort Hood. Leslie Phillips, spokeswoman for the committee, in an e-mail called the decision “an affront to Congress’s Constitutional obligation to conduct independent oversight” and said that committee chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., is weighing further legal action. But lawmakers may be limited in what they can do to force the Pentagon to comply with the subpoena, according to legal experts. At issue is...

In a speech to political allies gathered at Cape Canaveral last week, President Obama laid out his vision for America's space program. Under the Obama plan, NASA will spend $100 billion on human spaceflight over the next 10 years in order to accomplish nothing. Of course, that's not how Mr. Obama phrased it. But beneath the President's flowery rhetoric, that's how things add up. Here's the background. In 2004, the Bush administration launched a program called Constellation to develop a set of flight systems, including the Orion crew capsule and the Ares 1 and Ares 5 medium and heavy lift...

RUSSIA HAS warned that it could withdraw from a new nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States if it feels threatened by Washington’s planned missile defence system in central Europe. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov issued the warning as his president, Dmitry Medvedev, and US counterpart Barack Obama prepared to head to the Czech Republic for tomorrow’s signing of a long-awaited treaty to cut their countries’ arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads by about a third. As Prague ramped up security for the visit of the two leaders, Mr Obama’s administration yesterday unveiled a new policy renouncing the development of new...

Two weeks after a conservative group disparaged Justice Department lawyers who previously represented terror suspects, Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday weighed in for the first time, calling such lawyers "patriots." “Those who reaffirm our nation’s most essential and enduring values do not deserve to have their own values questioned,” Holder told a group of lawyers who offer "pro bono," or voluntary, legal services. "Let me be clear about this: Lawyers who provide counsel for the unpopular are, and should be treated as what they are: patriots." The crowd, gathered to honor Holder with an award from the Washington-based Pro...

Two reviews outlining the Obama administration’s defense and security strategy have avoided any mention of anti-Muslim labels, reported the Washington Times on Friday, February 12. "(President Barack Obama) had made it clear as we are looking at counterterrorism that our principal focus is al Qaeda and global violent extremism,” David Heyman, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy, said. “And that is the terminology and language that has been articulated." A 108-page review by the Homeland Security Department has dropped any reference to words such as “Islamists” and “Islamic”. Instead, the document used the terms of “Al-Qaeda”, “terrorist”, “extremist” and “violent...

On Monday, the nation’s capital was still digging out from the weekend’s record snowfall that would effectively shut down the federal government for days. Making matters worse was the awareness among DC residents that their shoveling would require a repeat performance quite soon, as another major winter storm was due to hit early Wednesday. What a perfect day to announce the formation of a new federal agency to study and report on global warming.

While many accounts have been written about the extremely 'shady' dealings which Goldman Sachs has/had with AIG – which led directly to AIG's $180 billion bail-out – unless I've missed it, one of the key issues has been soft-pedaled and another has been ignored altogether. These two topics which I intend to discuss are a) that Goldman Sachs used AIG as its financial 'toilet'; and b) that Goldman Sachs had begun openly and deliberately misrepresenting assets/investments to investors starting in 2006 or 2007 – at a time when all the other banker-oligarchs were continuing to assert their “mark to model”...

In an oped in USA Today, John Brennan -- Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism -- responds to critics of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies by saying "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda." Brennan writes that, "Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill." In the oped, titled "'We need no lectures': Administration disrupts terrorists’ plots, takes fight to them abroad," Brennan writes that politics "should never get in the way of national security. But too many in...

On February 2nd, NBC correspondent Pete Williams announced Breaking News during the 5 PM ET edition of Hardball: the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Abdul Mutallab, was giving fresh, actionable information to the FBI which the United States is in turn "aggressively chasing down." Less than an hour later, this NewsBuster [AKA FReeper governsleast] blogged on the matter, wondering whether by leaking the news, "the Obama administration compromised national security," in an attempt to deflect the criticism it had been receiving for mirandizing Mutallab rather than treating him like the enemy combatant he is. On today's Fox News Watch, panelist Jim...

As he professes to want to reduce the dangerous budget deficit, Obama brings to mind the hapless engineers at Toyota who find that their vehicles accelerate whether or not the driver wants them to. It appears that no matter how hard Obama jams on the brakes with his new-found commitment to deficit reduction -- having already almost doubled the deficit in one year -- the level of red ink just seems inexorably to rise. Obviously, more fundamental change in the budget's engineering is needed. But, unfortunately, it is easier to recall a car than a president. Obama's announced intention to...

There is a saying in police work and in military service that certain very noxious, offensive substances always roll downhill. That is to say, foul-ups instigated by bad policy will always be blamed on the lowest possible links in the chain of command. Such is the case now in Afghanistan. Diana West writes extensively about U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal’s (pictured above with CIC Obama) “hearts and minds” Afghanistan counter-insurgency campaign: Sacrificing American lives by denying artillery and air support to our ground troops pinned down under heavy enemy fire is acceptable, because artillery and bombs may cause collateral damage...

He's the expert's expert on this issue and it's impossible to ignore his reasoning!In an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post Former CIA Director Michael Hayden describes how the political decisions taken by Obama and his Dept. of Justice have undermined our national security. Covering areas like CIA interrogations and the KSM trial, the op-ed deserves to be read in full. The following excerpts deal primarily with the issues raised by the handling of the Christmas Day aka "Underwear" Bomber: Obama administration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism By Michael V. HaydenWashington Post Sunday, January 31, 2010 ...We got...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review. In the letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, obtained by The Associated Press, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that the Justice Department is reviewing Hatch's request and other materials to determine whether to open an investigation into whether the BCS violates antitrust laws.

Five months ago, British shoe bomber Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence for his failed attempt in 2001 to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner, was moved out of the isolation wing at the Supermax prison in Colorado -- prompting some conservative lawmakers to suggest that the Obama administration is making it possible for the self-proclaimed Al Qaeda terrorist to radicalize his fellow prisoners. Critics said the move was part of what they say is a troubling pattern in the administration to treat terrorists with kid gloves. "This decision is another product of the Obama administration's alarming effort to...

A South Jersey woman got the scare of her life when she tried to report suspicious activity on board a plane Philadelphia International Airport. The woman shared details of her terrifying ordeal only with Fox 29 News on Wednesday. Now, she's wondering if it was some kind of sick joke or a test run for a terrorist. Fox 29's Dave Schratwieser reported that 12 days after her red-eye flight from Los Angeles, the US Airways passenger is still upset over an incident on her flight, the reaction to it by the flight crew, and the lack of reaction from authorities....

One of the most oft-asked questions since the "underwear bomber" was arrested on Christmas day is why was he treated as a domestic criminal instead of being turned over to to our intelligence agencies to be interrogated. As Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the Underwear Bomber, was fresh from the terrorist operations in Yemen, we could have gotten valuable information regarding al Qaeda's new set-up in Yemen. The word leaked out is immediately after his arrest Abdulmutallab sang like a canary, then he was read his Miranda rights,so he "lawyered-up" and stopped talking. If he had been turned over to the special...

The U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission. John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission and Navy Secretary during the Reagan Administration, says a reluctance to cause offense by citing...

<p>He's tanned, he's rested and he's back in love with the cameras!</p>
<p>For the third day in a row since returning from his Christmas/New Year's vacation, Barack 'can't I just eat my waffles' Obama is appearing before the cameras to speak to the American people.</p>

Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that the “chickens came home to roost” on 9-11. He was wrong. But they have now, indeed, come home to roost as we witness the results of the unilateral disarmament President Obama has practiced in the war on terror. Beset once more by terrorism on our soil and in our airspace, we find ourselves suddenly overmatched by those who the Bush Administration kept away from our shores for seven years. This new onset of terrorism is not the product of any change in the international environment or some new “systemic” flaw in our intelligence operations. It...

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution Last week, while Congress and the nation were preoccupied with the holidays, the Treasury made a Christmas eve announcement that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years. The Treasury's press release notes: “At the time the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship in September 2008, Treasury established Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (PSPAs) to ensure that each firm maintained a positive net worth....

Documents produced by the Department of Homeland Security indicate that in fiscal 2010 the department is planning to catch only 26 percent of travelers committing major criminal violations while seeking to enter the United States through international airports. DHS documents also indicate that the department believes it will fail to screen against law enforcement databases 15 percent of travelers entering the United States in 2010 through all official ports of entry. In fiscal 2008, according to DHS, the department caught only 25 percent of those committing “major violations” while entering the U.S. on international flights. It also planned to catch...

Yesterday Newsweek revealed that on December 22nd, three days before the attempted underwear bombing, the President was warned that an attack might be imminent. In a background briefing for reporters on December 29, also attributed in an official White House transcript to a "senior administration official", that official asserted that in the wake of the attempted underpants attack, it had become clear to the President and top advisers that before Christmas, the US government was in possession of "bits and pieces" of information, which, if they had been properly knitted together, "could have...allowed us to disrupt the attack or certainly...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- A top counterterrorism official is warning that al-Qaida and other extremists are working to test U.S. defenses and launch an attack on American soil.</p>
<p>National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter says the failed Christmas Day attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner is the starkest reminder of that threat.</p>

OBAMAÂ’S TERROR FRIENDLY ADMINISTRATION IS A Â“SYSTEMATIC FAILUREÂ” On Christmas Day, 2009, the first of many terror chickens to come, came home to roost when a Nigerian member of Al Qaeda climbed aboard a US commercial flight headed from Amsterdam to Detroit and attempted to set off a chemical bomb mid-flight. Once again, civilians found themselves in the position of having to provide for their own safety and security as the folks whose primary purpose is to provide for the common defense of the people, came up sorely lacking. Had it not been for a handful of brave patriots willing...

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was briefed in October on an assassination attempt by Al Qaeda that investigators now believe used the same underwear bombing technique as the Nigerian suspect who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, U.S. intelligence and administration officials tell NEWSWEEK. The briefing to Brennan was delivered at the White House by Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s chief counterterrorism official. In late August, Nayef had survived an assassination attempt by an operative dispatched by the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda who was pretending to turn himself in. The operative had tried...

Report: Brennan knew of underwear bombing technique By Tony Romm - 01/02/10 01:24 PM ET The White House's top counter-terrorism adviser learned in October that al Qaeda operatives had researched -- and attempted -- attacks using the same underwear bombing technique employed aboard Flight 253 on Christmas Day, Newsweek reported on Saturday. According to reports, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan received the briefing from his counterpart in Saudi Arabia, who survived an assassination by al Qaeda attackers from Yemen. Reports Newsweek: "The briefing to Brennan was delivered at the White House by Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s chief counter-terrorism...

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh? But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow...